Cuomo hardball Working Families Party cries payback on ballot rule

ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo says the Working Families Party has to get to work if it wants to remain relevant.

The governor showed little sympathy Tuesday for his one-time political allies after a state commission approved a plan that could boot the progressive party from the state ballot.

“If it’s not a credible party, then it shouldn’t be getting credible tax dollars,” Cuomo said at an event where he gave away Thanksgiving turkeys on Long Island.

The Public Campaign Finance Commission, tasked with creating a public matching funds program for state elections, voted on Monday to raise the requirement for minor parties to maintain ballot status from 50,000 votes in statewide elections every four years to 130,000, or 2% of the total vote every two years.

The higher threshold could wipe out the WFP and other minor political parties who fail to meet the mark.

“The Working Families Party, I think, would meet that threshold,” Cuomo said.

“You have to work to meet that threshold, but if you’re not working to meet a threshold, then you shouldn’t be qualifying for public money anyway.”

Critics contend that

New York State Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs, Cuomo’s appointee to the commission, led the charge to increase the qualification requirements to the ballot lines as a form of political payback.

Cuomo and the Working Families Party have been at odds since the group endorsed his Democratic primary challenger Cynthia

Nixon last year before ultimately placing his name on their line in the general election.

Jacobs maintains the move was merely a means to keep costs down for a taxpayer-funded public finance system that will cover all statewide and legislative races.

Several third party groups, including the Working Families Party, the Conservative Party, and several Republicans in both the Senate and Assembly are mounting legal challenges against the commission’s authority.

WFP head Bill Lipton (inset) openly accused Cuomo of orchestrating the change and vowed to fight the move in court.

“The ballot qualifications that Cuomo demanded of the commission would make New York among the most hostile states in America to minor party organizing,” Lipton said. “We don’t believe they’ll hold up in court. They’re wrong, and they’re a politically motivated attack on us that has nothing to do with public financing.

“Whatever the qualifications thresholds end up being, we’ll work like hell to surpass them,” he added.

Green Party officials were equally outraged by the governor’s comments and the commission’s changes to election law, which are binding unless overturned by the state Legislature in a special end-of-year meeting or future sessions.